Reminiscences of an Air Deccan Employee.

Air Deccan was great institution I was proud to be associated with. The same day I was defending my post graduate thesis in Air Transport Management in Cranfield University way back in 2003, was the day, Air Deccan's inaugural flight to Hubli took off from Bangalore. Ever since, it was my dream to join Air Deccan. It took me almost 3 years, multiple trips and a few unsuccessful interviews before I could eventually join the company in the area I wanted - Revenue Management and Network Planning. What followed was some of the happiest days in my working career.

The founder of the people's airline was also very much a down to earth person as far as employees were concerned. He mingled freely with them and any staff could approach him if he or she had a genuine issue. Captain Gopinath also had a very committed second rung of leadership, all devoted to the Air Deccan cause. Fiercely loyal to him, they worked behind the scenes heading the operations of the crucial departments. Captain Samuel who headed Operations, Vijaya Menon who handled PR, Mohan Kumar the tough task master in Finance and the creative John Kuruvilla, my top boss at commercial, Ajay Bhatkal who headed IT, they were some of the crucial cogs which kept Air Deccan running smoothly along with Captain Gopinath.

"Captain Gopinath featured with COO Warwick Brady. Hired from Irish airline RyanAir, Warwick played a major part in Air Deccan's development during his tenure. I had to clear an interview with Warwick before I got my offer letter"

Life as an Air Deccan employee was tough...very tough. It was like working with a gun pointed to your head. The pressure was relentless especially in my department Revenue Management (RM), where often you get mere seconds to make a decision... It was no place for the faint hearted or the emotionally sensitive.

But yet most of us employees not just in RM but also other teams, enjoyed it. Yes, pressure was everywhere but you also got rewarded handsomely... may not have been much monetarily, but definitely by the recognition you got in the company. Within months of joining Air Deccan as an analyst, I got promoted as assistant manager in my department. And soon after, one morning a uniformed company messenger arrived at my desk with a letter and a request that I acknowledge receipt immediately.

I still remember the apprehensions which I felt at that moment as normally such letters can only mean one thing...Bad news! With trembling fingers, I tore open the envelope to find... An official communication that I have been selected as a member of the select team identified to "fast track" the company. If I have to choose ONE golden moment in my 25 years of working in the aviation field, it was that moment with Air Deccan.

"An Air Deccan advertisement. This was before Kerala operations were started early 2006. The airline later had an aircraft based at Trivandrum and had a strong presence in Kochi too."

In Air Deccan, the biggest advantage was that employees were encouraged to innovate, think outside the conventional boundaries while remaining within the requirements of the organization. Assignments were innovative and insightful. In the one month gap I had before joining them after I got my job offer, I was asked to do an investigation in my spare time (with the full consent of my then employer with whom I serving out my notice period) about why Air Deccan's Kochi to Trivandrum flight which those days originated from Chennai was not doing well between the two Kerala cities. I called up a few travel agencies in Kochi pretending to be a passenger wanting to book a flight ticket to Trivandrum. In one of the travel agencies, a staff quite bluntly told me that I am better off booking a taxi instead of a flight. Not only would it be quicker according to the staff, it would be cheaper as well, particularly if there were 3 or 4 of us traveling together.

Such assignments taught me things way beyond what any text book will do., namely that there is no substitute for information you gather from the field. The airline, after making further efforts eventually delinked the flight in question and made it as separate Chennai - Trivandrum and Chennai- Kochi flights.

Did it mean that Air Deccan management shunned theory? Not at all. It aimed at getting the right mix of both. Deccan was famous for its 1 Re fare, but the management was fully aware that 1 Re fare. alone will not make money for the company. As a result, on full flights, the last 5 or 10 percent of the seats were sold at high levels comparable to to Air India or Jet Airways fares...the conventional Low Cost Carrier (LCC) model practiced by airlines worldwide.

And the top management, Captain Gopinath and his department heads took care of their employees. One day during the Diwali peak period, a worried airport manager at Madurai called up the Commercial head saying a local film personality had created a ruckus at the airport because he was unhappy at the high fare which was then available on the by then almost full flight. The personality threatened that if he did not get a low fare, he will hold a press conference and 'expose' Air Deccan.

"M G Mohan Kumar - A chartered accountant by profession, he was Air Deccan's chief finance officer. A tough task master he may have been, but his unwavering focus on the task in hand was never in doubt."

"John Kuruvilla - Head of Commercial when I joined Air Deccan. An accomplished advertising professional before he joined Captain Gopinath, John always seemed to have a limitless source of energy Marketing was his strength and after he left Air Deccan, he joined the Oberoi Group."

John Kuruvilla, the commercial head came to our Revenue Management (RM) room and relayed the news. He informed straight away that he will not reduce the fare, we (the RM team) was right and to continue with our work. He told us they any negative publicity from the press conference (if it happened) would be dealt by the top management, told us to remain focused and carry on working. This sort of total support and commitment to one's employees is something which I have rarely encountered in other companies. And in the end John's assessment was correct. The "threatened" press conference never happened and the seats were picked up by other passengers and the flight went full and more importantly at high revenue.

History judges Air Deccan as a failure. That is not fully correct. It was a concept ahead of its time. It had no one in India, being the first LCC in the country, to look up to or learn lessons from.

Yet Captain Gopinath and his team fearlessly ventured into areas where others hesitated to tread. Making passengers pay for their meals, not assigning seat numbers, starting flights to places like Tuticorin, Kandla or Dehradun and many more... airports which hadn't seen passenger flights for decades, Captain Gopinath and his team went fearlessly ahead. Airlines like Indigo which are now successful have a lot to thank Captain Gopinath and Air Deccan for their pioneering work. And in the end Captain Gopinath's vision about India being a LCC market was proved correct when Air Sahara, Kingfisher and much later Jet Airways all of whom were full service airlines, all ceased operations. Another LCC, Indigo has not just become India's leading airline but also become a major airline globally.

"The Air Deccan Revenue Management team where I worked, celebrating colleagues’ birthday at the company head office in Cunningham Road, Bangalore"

"The Revenue Management team of Air Deccan along with a few family members at the wedding of one of the RM team members. The tiny tot in the picture is my son. It was a very close knit team in Air Deccan and and many of us are still in regular touch with each other."

I consider it as a privilege that I was given an opportunity to be part of Air Deccan. Many of us employees are still in touch on a regular basis through a WhatsApp group more than 12 years after the airline ceased operations. Air Deccan is an organization about which almost without exception, all its employees including myself have only good things to say about our time spent there.

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Written straight from the heart..

Rajeev Soman

Faculty Kairos Institute, Ernakulam